Keep Market Street Initiative

Thirty Years Ago You've got a good weekly newspaper. One way to make it even better would be to fire that ignorant pseudo-intellectual, Duncan Shepherd. His movie reviews are totally worthless to the general public and his presence in your publication demeans your entire staff. Because he is obviously such an idiot, one tends to think you all are. -- LETTERS: "FIRE PLUG," David Nehrlich, November 10, 1977

Twenty-Five Years Ago An article entitled "One Step Ahead of the Devil," published in these pages October 21, 1982, made reference to a Mr. Tim Sutton having been killed in the course of a bank robbery. Mr. Sutton was not involved in a bank robbery and is still living. The Reader regrets this error. -- LETTERS: "ERRATUM," Editor, November 11, 1982

Twenty Years Ago Merchants along Market Street championed the successful effort to reinstate that name to the downtown boulevard briefly known as Martin Luther King Jr. Way. But other San Diegans played a role in assuring that the ballot measure was placed before voters, who approved it last week by a 20 percent margin. Campaign disclosure statements filed by the Keep Market Street Initiative Committee show that other non-Market Street businesses contributed to the Proposition F campaign. Meridian Associates, builders of the downtown high-rise condominium project at Front and G streets, gave $300; Porter International, a local customs clearing house, gave $100; the Gildred Development Company contributed $200. Disclosure statements also list a $100 donation from R.E. Morris, a former SDG&E executive who lives downtown. (Morris this week denied giving any money to the Yes on F forces.) -- CITY LIGHTS: "PEOPLE WHO KICKED IN,"Paul Krueger, November 12, 1987

Fifteen Years Ago Times Mirror executives last week announced that the San Diego County edition of the Los Angeles Times will cease to exist December 18. Before the San Diego edition was launched, the Times had 27,615 daily subscribers in the county. More than 10,000 subscribers were added that very first month, but after that, circulation grew slower than expected, sources say. The latest figures, for the year ending March 31, put daily circulation at 61,653. That's up just a fraction from the year ending March 31, 1990, when daily readership stood at 60,095. (Circulation peaked at 65,000 in 1988, according to a recent report in the New York Times. ) -- CITY LIGHTS: "END OF TIMES," Thomas K. Arnold, November 5, 1992

Ten Years Ago In the days after Chargers quarterback Stan Humphries received his latest concussion, the team reassured the public that Humphries was consulting neurologists and that a CT-scan and an MRI showed no problems. Humphries's agent chimed in, pledging that the team cared about his client and that Humphries would not return to the playing field until he was "100 percent." But experts in the treatment of concussion victims say that this comforting scenario is misleading and incomplete. The knockout blow Humphries received in the November 2 game against the Cincinnati Bengals is well documented from the outside. But what happened inside his brain and the long-term consequence of that trauma are harder to pinpoint. -- CITY LIGHTS: "HEAD PROBLEMS," Phyllis Orrick, November 13, 1997

Five Years Ago The body lies in a position of repose, a 12-year-old girl in pajamas, on her bed, in Fallbrook, California. Her blue eyes, though open, see nothing, and for ten more minutes, no one sees her. No one knows yet that the sheets and Judy's pajama top are stained with chocolate, that her neck is stained with chocolate, that a section of yellow toilet paper on the bed beside her is stained with chocolate, or that her arms are folded across her chest and will not be, cannot be, unfolded again. No one knows that a spoon lies balanced on her lips. -- "THE DEATH OF JUDY HUSCHER," Laura McNeal, November 7, 2002